Easy Money
by Llrael Of The Forest
Summary: Two-Face and the Riddler go on a crime spree across America. Hilarity, hi-jinx and ho-yay ensue. -Eventual- slash, but not for a while.
1. You Can Set Me Free

[A/N] Hello, guys! Thanks for joining me in my first foray into the wonderful world of fanfic! This little plot bunny has been nibbling at my brain for a good six months, at least, and it was only my dear friend gothicdragon752's incessant pestering that convinced me to put it down in writing. I'm basically aiming for Ocean's Eleven meets Cannonball Run meets every buddy movie ever made. It is definitely aiming towards eventual Two-Face/Riddler slash, although I hope to keep up the drama and the funny enough to keep non-slashers interested, and I don't see the rating getting above T. There may also be slight implied femmeslash further in.

I am always open to constructive criticism, especially since I am an English lass writing about Americans and so I urge you to point out anything which doesn't make sense, any stupid typos or grammatical faux pas, or other nitpicky details. I can't promise that this will be updated regularly, or have any kind of coherent plot. I'm just having fun, guys.

Disclaimer: I own nowt but my plot bunnies and some of the jokes.

Serving Suggestion: Best served on the rocks, with a soundtrack of Billy Joel, Glenn Miller and The Doors.

* * *

Edward Nygma loved questions. Big questions, small questions, they were all fun. He particularly liked the kind of questions that kept one awake at night, although generally he preferred that they be keeping _other people_ awake.

The question that was keeping him awake this particular night (or evening, as it was barely gone ten o'clock) was whether he could escape from his cell in the confines of Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane by repeatedly banging his head on the exterior wall, and if not, how far he _could_ get before he died of massive cerebral haemorrhaging. This particular riddle had kept him amused for the last half an hour, but Nygma was running out of possible avenues of exploration and was coming to the conclusion that it wasn't worth trying. He was, once more, stuck in this rat-infested hellhole with the madmen and the lunatics and the scum of the fair city of Gotham. Oh, _joy._

As if to confirm his assessment, there came the patter of tiny paws on the bare concrete floor and a faint squeak. Nygma sat up slowly from where he had been lying on the bed, removed one of his Asylum-approved shoes equally slowly and threw it solidly at the corner of the room. There was a wet smack and a truncated squeak.

Well, _that_ was satisfying.

"Riddle me this, what's brown and furry and got a dent in it?" he muttered with relish, getting up to inspect the damage. As he approached, the unfortunate rat picked itself up, shook its head, gave an affronted squeak and disappeared into the hole from which it had emerged. "That's right, you'd better run, you little bastard." He retrieved his shoe, to discover a scrap of yellowed paper under it. He picked it up – gingerly, as it turned out to be rather soggy. There were tiny tooth-marks on the corners, and his surname was written across it in what looked suspiciously like red crayon. Interest piqued, he turned it over, but all he found were the words "Be ReDdY", written, like the front, in a wobbly hand rather like that of a young child just learning to form letters.

Clearly, Edward deduced smugly, it was written by an idiot.

Satisfied, thanks to this great feat of detecting, that the message was worthless, he tossed it aside and picked up the week's crossword instead, humming merrily.

"Dum dum dum, doo doo, _you may be right, I may be crazy, but it may just be a lunatic you're looking for... _um, something, doo doo doo..."

Where had he heard that today? Oh, yes, Harvey Dent had been singing it under his breath in the rec room. Funny, he'd never had Dent down as a Billy Joel kind of guy. Admittedly, Edward _was_ a fan of the piano man, but nevertheless he'd stored that little bit of info away, under "P" for "Potential Blackmail Material". The song itself was amusingly appropriate...

Edward rather liked Dent. It was always a challenge, trying to keep on top of which of the man's two personalities was talking at any time, and if there was anything Edward liked more than a good riddle, it was a challenge. It helped that Dent was pretty much the one remaining inmate with an ounce of intelligence who was still speaking to him. He'd spent three months sharing a cell with Jonathan Crane not long ago, until the self-styled master of fear had applied to the head psychiatrist to be transferred to solitary, giving his reasons as "If I hear the word 'riddle' one more goddamned time, so help me I'll kill everyone on this island.". Edward had felt rather hurt; after all, it wasn't his fault that he thought of interesting conundrums in the middle of the night and felt compelled to share them with whoever was nearest, regardless of whether they were trying to sleep.

7 down, appropriately enough, was "Fear. (11)". Edward filled in "trepidation".

So Crane wasn't talking to him, and because Crane wasn't talking to him, neither was Jervis Tetch. Edward would be the first to admit that Tetch was every bit as mad as his pseudonym would suggest, but the man knew some good brainteasers, even if he did insist on delivering them in rhyme. Add to this the fact that the Joker had broken out the previous week, trailing Harley Quinn like a love-sick puppy, and that Harley had in turn dragged along Poison Ivy. That left, of the usual crowd of inmates, Victor Fries, who was rarely seen out of his refrigerated cell, Killer Croc, who was likewise never seen, largely because he was an armour-plated killing machine, Arnold Wesker, who, once you removed the terrifying puppet, was just a relatively harmless old man, and Dent.

Edward turned his attention to 17 across: "Bird of stone. (3)". He lifted his pen to write "roc", and was rudely interrupted by the PA system.

"Ten o'clock," it rasped. "Lights out." There was an almighty clunk and, as promised, the lights went out.

"Damn." Edward put the crossword down reluctantly and lay back, locking his hands behind his head. Oh well. He could think just as well in the dark. To prove it, he spent the next quarter of an hour thinking about what it would be like to see in the dark. Then he thought about goldfish, which could see in both the infrared and ultraviolet spectra, and why such a useful ability was possessed by such useless animals. It was around the time he was thinking about ultraviolet radiation that he heard a scrabbling in the corner again. The bloody rats had some nerve, coming back. He dealt with this new problem the same way he'd dealt with the earlier one – by throwing his shoe at it again.

The squeaking that came from the corner this time was louder and considerably more angry. And, Edward discovered as he got up to retrieve his footwear for the second time that evening, the piece of paper was much larger. Interesting.

There was a very small and dusty window high on the wall of the cell. By holding the paper at arm's length and at an angle, Edward could just about read it. This time, the writing started off neater, and using a real pen. It said: "We mean it. We leave tonight. TF.". Then the red crayon and erratic spelling returned with a vengeance. "P.s. MaIsy SeYS yOU tHreW a ShOo aT heR PleeS dOnt shE is A Very NiCe rAt and noT eveN sliYtlee diZzeeZd."

TF. Two-Face. Well, that changed matters. He was clearly planning on breaking out tonight, and he was obviously working with someone else, because Edward was pretty damn sure that the former DA could spell 'diseased'. He also seemed to want to bring Edward along too. That was thoughtful of him. Still, Edward thought, it was probably a lost cause. The security staff were all on edge after the Joker's escape. It'd take something pretty spectacular to-

But Edward never got to finish that thought, interrupted as he was by screams and shouting in the distance. This was fairly normal for Arkham, but the screams were then replaced by a rumbling like an avalanche – a rumbling that was steadily getting louder and louder.

Edward peered cautiously through the bars of his cell. The corridor was almost pitch dark, but there was definitely movement in the distance. Then something came pouring out of the darkness; a huge mass, like a tidal wave, roaring down the corridor until it broke with a deafening clap in front of Edward's cell.

Rats! Thousands of the blasted things, brown and shrieking and reeking of the sewers. Edward leaped up onto his bed as they flooded through the bars and piled up against the walls. Then the tide outside changed, and parted, and a light shone through the gap. Down the gap like a twisted Moses came a gaunt figure, lantern held in front of it like some sort of beacon and face covered by a grotesque gas mask. Behind this apparition, half in light and half in shadow, was...

"Two-Face!" Edward was now backed into the corner of his cell to avoid the rodents which had almost reached the level of the bed. "What the hell?!"

"Evening, Ed!" Harvey Dent grinned back. "Care to take a walk with us?"


	2. Movin' Out

[A/N] Welcome back! This chapter is longer than the last one, a trend which I hope will continue as I remember how to write properly. Typography-Nazis among you may balk at my typing Two-Face's lines in _**bold italics;**_ for this I apologise, but I'm not drawing a comic and so can't use cool colours and different shaped speech bubbles to distinguish between Harvey's two sides.

This chapter features a cameo from Clancy, the bumbling GCPD officer conceived by my friends _Sisanae_ and _Pippin's Socks_.

Disclaimer: I own nowt, not even Clancy.

* * *

"Evening, Ed!" Harvey Dent grinned back. "Care to take a walk with us?"

"Depends," Edward replied sceptically. "Are the rats coming too?"

Two-Face scowled. "_**Just do it, idiot." **_And there it was, the instant transition between personalities that kept Edward permanently on his toes. "_**Or we leave you here with the rest of the crazies.**_"

"Sounds good to me," Edward said hurriedly as the sea of rodents parted enough for him to be able to make it to the door of his cell, which the gas-masked figure was currently unlocking with a large iron key. "I trust you have some sort of plan for getting out of here?"

"Sort of," Harvey said. "Edward, this is Otis Flannegan, Ratcatcher. Mr Flannegan, Edward Nygma, the Riddler. Mr Flannegan apparently has the plan."

"Evenin'," the Ratcatcher rasped, the gas mask distorting his voice eerily as he opened the cell door. "You might want to relax, gentlemen..."

Edward opened his mouth to ask why, but he never had a chance; the Ratcatcher thumped the floor with his lantern staff and suddenly his rats drew together, piling on top of each other like a wall across the corridor. A wall which started to move, as the rats on the top-most layers ran down the front, to be replaced by creatures from the lower levels in a curious rolling motion first as slow as a glacier, then faster and faster as it approached the would-be escapees.

"Oh, hel-mmrph!" Edward's curse was cut off by a mouthful of rodent as the wave of rats swept them up like sand in an ocean current and carried them off down the line of cells, still gathering speed. Edward fought his way up to the surface just in time to see the steel-barred door at the end of the corridor bend and collapse under the sheer weight of the living tsunami. A similar fate met the next door, and the door after that, as the rodents showed no signs of slowing, tearing through the asylum like a battering ram.

* * *

Clancy Sheffield was not having a good night. Arkham Security had sent a substantial portion of their staff out with the Gotham police force in an attempt to apprehend the Joker, acting on the idea that such an attempt might work better if the people trying to do the apprehending actually knew something about the people being apprehended. This had left a large hole in the asylum's everyday security, which the GCPD had generously agreed to fill – with the most junior officers they could find, most of them drafted in at extremely short notice. So, Clancy had been forced to phone the pretty girl from the chip shop on 21st Street and say that no, he couldn't make their burger-milkshakes-and-a-film evening, he had to babysit lunatics. He didn't want to be there any more than most of the inmates did, and he wondered why he had agreed to this. He hadn't wanted to be a policeman anyway. Even now, he still entertained fantasies of finally becoming a big-shot lawyer, all sunglasses and sharp suits and "If it pleases the court..."; of riding around in a red Corvette and making snide yet devastatingly intelligent wise-cracks; of sipping brandy in a leather recliner and telling of his latest exciting case, and of the bevies of young lady barristers who would be gathered around him, hanging on his every word. Imagine his horror, then, when, sat in a rickety plastic chair in a lunatic asylum drinking instant coffee from a polystyrene cup, the intercom had started screaming incoherently about escaping inmates and rats everywhere. This wasn't how he'd imagined his future! He wasn't trained for this!

There was a rumbling in the distance. What did that mean? What would the cops on TV do? Oh, that was easy, Clancy thought. They'd get their giant flashlight in one hand and their gun in the other, walk calmly but cautiously towards the disturbance and announce, "Who goes there?". And the bad guy would come out and the cop would say "You're under arrest!" or "You're nicked, mate!" and all would be well and the cop would be a hero. Clancy didn't have a giant flashlight. He didn't even have a gun. Still, he thought, a good cop ought to be able to make do with whatever he had. He had a miniature torch on his keyring – presumably one was supposed to use it to find one's car in the dark, but it was so weak that by the time you actually saw your car, you had already walked into it. He took that in his left hand and his taser in the other, and very slowly opened the door from which the noise was coming.

The corridor was deserted, although the rumbling was definitely coming from further down it. Clancy felt a bit silly addressing an empty room, but he did so anyway, because it was what the cops on TV did.

"W-who goes there?"

The corridor said nothing, but the rumbling was getting louder. Clancy took a couple of steps backwards, then a few more. Then suddenly the world went brown and grey, the smell of the sewers filled his nose and he found himself being pressed down into the extremely unyielding floor. Just as suddenly, the weight was gone, and all that was left was a lingering stench, a thousand tiny claw marks in his uniform and the sound of his joints gently popping back into place. Clancy sat up slowly. The door was hanging off its hinges, as was the one further down the corridor. The desk now bore more in common with firewood, and the instant coffee was currently exploring the insides of the intercom. After giving this all due consideration, Clancy lay back down, closed his eyes and thought about cheeseburgers, strawberry milkshake and Eileen from the chip shop. He wasn't being paid enough for this.

* * *

Door after door burst open under the relentless onslaught, and the asylum guards who inevitably lay in its path suddenly found themselves, like the unfortunate Clancy, trampled underfoot or forced aside, raked by thousands of tiny claws.

"What about all my gear?" Edward had to yell to be heard over the deafening rumble as the living tsunami cannoned relentlessly through the asylum. The Ratcatcher drifted up through the wave until he was within shouting distance, ducking a hanging sign that threatened premature beheading.

"Don't worry, sir! Some of my friends have already collected your effects!"

"Oh. Er, good-"

"Look out, atrium coming up!"

The wave broke over the top of the main staircase and flowed down into the Asylum's lobby, sending staff and security alike scattering. Edward caught a glimpse of a pair of secretaries huddled on a desk shrieking as the rats passed. Then suddenly they were through the main doors, there was fresh air and moonlight and the lights of Gotham twinkled across the water. But how were they going to get across the bay? There was only the bridge, and that would surely be locked down by now... Then Edward saw a solitary van sat idling on the lawn, back doors wide open. It was one of Arkham's own patient transport vehicles; armoured on the outside and padded on the inside, like the asylum itself. The wave was slowing now, spreading out across the flat ground. As it approached, the van roared into life and took off towards the asylum's great iron gates, one of which currently stood ajar, twisted at the bottom as if it had been subjected to a great force. Edward had just enough time to realise the Ratcatcher's plan before the three of them were hurled from the top of the wave into the van, followed by an assortment of bags and other equipment.

Edward hit the far wall of the van with his shoulder, then immediately had to duck to avoid being brained by his own beloved question-mark cane. Two-Face managed to roll as he hit, saving most of his dignity, and Flannigan seemed merely to step off the very crest of the wave, as if he'd done this many times before. Just before the doors closed, Edward caught a glimpse of the wave breaking, splitting into ten thousand tiny shapes which seemed to dissolve, finding holes in the ground, heading back to the sewers, or else fleeing away into the thick undergrowth. Then the doors latched and all that was left was the flickering light on the ceiling of the van, the rumble of the engine and the sound of three men trying to catch their breath again. After a minute or so, Edward carefully pushed himself up into a sitting position and whistled appreciatively.

"That was fun," he said with feeling. "We should do it again some time." Harvey gave him a disbelieving look, which Edward disregarded utterly, instead grabbing one of the bags that had been thrown in after them, in search of his things. He eventually found his hat, looking slightly battered but still serviceable. It clashed horribly with the Arkham uniform he was still wearing, but he put it on anyway, because there are some things that are Important.

A panel between the hold and the cabin slid back and a voice asked:

"Everyone okay back there?"

"Yes, thanks, Mike," the Ratcatcher answered. He had removed the gas mask now, revealing himself to be a pale, mousy man with beady eyes and ears that stuck out from under his untidy hair. "As we discussed, I think."

"Right you are, boss," came the reply, and then the crackle of a CB radio cut through the sound of the motor.

"_...escape...cshhhh..Arkham...cssshhhhhhhh...all units please report in...schhhhh"_

"Hello GCPD," said the voice from the cabin. "This is Arkham Patient Transport 23 in pursuit of escaped patients. All officers please note, the patients are probably armed, consider extremely dangerous. Do _not_ attempt to engage without back-up. Priority is to be given to previously escaped patients alias The Joker and Harley Quinn. Repeat..."

"Nicely done," Edward said. "But what about Arkham security?"

"They won't be going anywhere soon," reassured Flannigan. "My little friends have seen to that. Suffice to say, this is the only one of their vehicles still functioning.

"You're good." Edward was genuinely impressed. "Why haven't we met before?"

"_**He's not one of us**_", Two-Face explained. "_**We had him transferred from Blackgate."**_

"Oh." Edward looked disappointed. "So he's sane?"

"_**For a given value of sane."**_Two-Face was now digging through one of their many bags. "Speaking of, we've found you some light reading. Thought you might like it." He pulled out a dog-eared foolscap folder at least an inch thick, stuffed with closely-typed pages. As he handed it to Edward, quite a number of them fell out. They were mostly headed with 'Psychiatric Report' and dates reaching back several years, and contained words like 'neurotic' and 'obsessive-compulsive'.

"Ooo, you have no idea how long I've been looking for this!" Edward selected a page at random and scanned it. "Let's see... 'OCD' – knew that; 'narcissistic' – well, I _am_ devilishly good-looking; 'histrionic'... oh, am I really histrionic?"

"_**Yes. **_Especially if you have to ask that."

"Oh, look, Dr Leland kept all the riddles I sent her! Isn't that precious? I knew she loved me really."

"_**Just keep telling yourself that, Ed. Maybe someday it'll be true.**_"

Edward pouted. "Jealous much?"

"_**Hardly."**_

"Hey diddle diddle, time for a riddle, Harv! What's the longest river in the world?"

"_**How about we punch you in the face?"**_ Two-Face snapped.

"Oops, wrong answer!" Edward crowed. "Come now, Harvey, you know this one."

Harvey hesitated for a moment, then reached into his pocket and brought out a shiny silver coin. A practiced flick sent it spinning up in the air, to land neatly in the palm of his hand. Heads, smooth and unscarred. Harvey sighed in resignation.

"The Nile," he said with rather less venom.

"Denial is right!" Edward hooted triumphantly, point made. Harvey scowled but said nothing. "So," Edward continued, obsession satisfied for now. "Where are we going?"

"Mr Flannigan is dropping us off. We've left the van in a warehouse by the north industrial estate. We need to get out of city limits quickly and quietly. _**And that means no leaving clues for the Bat, understand?"**_

"What?" Edward looked distraught. "But I always leave clues! How will he know it's me?"

"_**That's the point, idiot!**_" Two-Face rolled his eyes, which was an unsettling sight if you happened to be sitting on his left side. "We don't _want_ the Bat to know what we're doing."

"Quiet back there," interrupted the mysterious Mike from the cabin, as the van slowed. "Police roadblock."

A few minutes of heated silence descended upon the escapees, during which Edward stuck his tongue out at Harvey, phrases like 'official business', 'thanks for your concern, officer, but...' and 'leave it to the professionals' floated through from the front of the van and Otis Flannigan wondered what he had done wrong to deserve being locked in a steel box with a pair of nutcases. Then the engine coughed back to life and they were off again, and Harvey let out a breath he hadn't realised he had been holding. It was a straight run now to the industrial estate, as long as nothing untoward happened. Twenty minutes, tops.

"The German for 'riddle' is '_Rätsel'_", Edward announced suddenly. "Did you know that? It's a nice word. _Rätsel. Rääääääääätsel."_

Harvey gritted his teeth. _Don't worry,_ he thought. _It'll be okay as long as no-one responds to him-_

"Really?" said Flannigan innocently. "I didn't know that."

"Oh, yes! And the French is..."

_Damnit._ Harvey leaned back against the side of the truck, as a variety of colourful foreign languages flew straight over his head. It was going to be a very long twenty minutes.


	3. Half A Mile Away

A/N: Behold, I am not dead, but merely sleeping! Alas, real life has rather interceded on my attempts to write this last month or so. So you can all thank Anonymous Reviewer Lynn for reminding me that I had written most of this (admittedly short) chapter already, and for giving me the push I needed to get my rear in gear to finish it off. Enjoy, and I promise I will do my best to update more frequently in the future!

I also apologise in advance for the obscure movie references.

* * *

Harvey felt an overwhelming sense of relief when the Arkham van finally ground to a halt in front of a run-down warehouse. The last half an hour had taxed his already scarce patience severely – it had mainly consisted of Edward talking constantly and tangentially about whatever crossed his mind while the Ratcatcher nodded his head and generally tried to look as if he had the faintest idea what the master-riddler was saying.

"Time to go," he said, as the doors were opened from the outside – presumably by the mysterious Mike, although by the time Harvey had climbed down to the street, dragging their gear, said henchman was already back in the driver's seat. "_**You can carry this**_," Two-Face added to Edward as he got out, handing him the largest of the bags.

"Oh, _sure thing,_ Harv, I'd _love_ to carry the biggest and heaviest bag, the contents of which are almost certainly _yours_," Edward muttered sarcastically as Harvey pulled a handful of banknotes out of one of the other bags, counted out a fair quantity and handed it to the Ratcatcher, who accepted it with a nod.

"Much obliged. Hope we don't see you again too soon," he said. "At least, not the wrong side of a cell door. Take care." And with that, he pulled the van door closed as the vehicle rumbled off down the street and out of sight.

Harvey pulled a large key-ring out of one of the bags, slung said bag over his shoulder and unlocked the warehouse's small side door. It creaked as he opened it, sending many months' worth of dust billowing outwards. He held it open for Edward, who was still muttering angrily about people not carrying their own damn bags, kicked the remainder of their equipment inside and groped along the wall for the light switch. The fluorescent strips along the ceiling flickered reluctantly to life, illuminating... not an awful lot. It looked like most warehouses tend to look after several months of neglect – grey and industrial, with a light coating of dust and dead insects on every available flat surface. Aside from the dust, the only thing in it was a large van-shaped object covered in a tarpaulin.

"Nice," Edward commented, dropping his bag on the floor. "Charming. Like what you've done with the place."

"_**Take it or leave it**_," offered Two-Face as he put down the equipment and hauled the cover off the van. "_**You can always run back to your cell if you think you're too good for us. **_We're sure the Batman would be happy to give you a lift. Would you like us to give him a call?"

"I can live with it," Edward said quickly.

"_**Good.**_" Two-Face rolled the tarpaulin carefully and set it aside. "We thought you might."

There was something about the van that was bothering Edward, and he wasn't quite sure what it was. He propped his chin up with one hand and examined it again. Four wheels, doors, windows, shiny black finish—ah! Riddle solved.

"It's all black," he said. Harvey made a face, or possibly two faces.

"Yes. It's black."

"Doesn't that bother you?"

"_**Yeah,"**_ Two-Face admitted with a shrug._** "It bothers us. But then Harvey pointed out that there are a million black vans in the country and only one half-black, half-white, **_and the thought of being dragged back to Arkham by the Bat bothered us more_**,"**_ Harvey finished. "We thought it was a _fair_ trade-off."

"Unusually practical of you," Edward remarked snidely. "Does it do anything else or is it just a big metal box with wheels?"

"_**What, you're expecting machine guns or something?"**_ Two-face said, opening the van's back doors in a series of metallic thumps. "Some of us are working on a budget here, Ed."

Despite the declaration that it was just a van, its interior _was_ rather interesting. Someone had removed most of the superfluous metal, for a start. The bulkhead between the rear and the cab was gone, as was most of the locking mechanism on the rear doors—this was presumably because if at any point there happened to be anything worth stealing in the van, this would be because it was_ already_ in the process of being liberated from its owners. Instead there was another pair of seats, bolted to the back of the existing ones, as well as a large number of boxes overflowing with miscellaneous things, mostly electronic equipment. They were divided very exactly into two groups, stacked on opposite sides of the van. Some of them had interesting labels on them, like "Detonators, misc." and "Safe-cracking tools, various.".

"The stuff on the right works," offered Harvey without being asked. "_**The stuff on the left doesn't. But **_**someone**_** refuses to let me get rid of it.**_Well, it might be useful! _**What, to throw at people?**_" As the conversation disintegrated into two personalities sniping at each other, Edward tipped out one of the left boxes, which produced a pile of broken circuitry, plastic bits and other detritus.

"I hate to say it, Two-face, but I think Harvey's right. This is junk. I say we ditch it—ooo, what's this?" Stuck at the very bottom of the box was something black, cuboid and plastic. Time for another riddle, Edward thought, and pulled it out. "Is this a radio?"

Behind him, Harvey came to an agreement with himself. "_**Fine. Flip it." **_There was a metallic clink and a flash of silver. "Damn. _**Thank you. Whatcha say, Ed?"**_

"It _is_ a radio," Edward said with some satisfaction, pulling out the handset from the pile of bits, solving one riddle and finding another in one smooth move. "I wonder if I could fix it."

"Why would you want to?" Harvey asked, but Edward was already levering the case off and poking at the wiring.

"Haven't you ever seen those eighties movies where the guys smuggling booze or whatever keep tabs on the cops over the radio?"

"No."

"Tsk tsk. Dear me, someone's missing a large chunk of their education. No wonder you're always so tetchy." Edward giggled. "Hah, _tetchy_, like Jervis. Geddit? Anyway, you got a soldering iron anywhere?"

"_**You're not doing that here,**_" Two-Face frowned. "_**We leave **_**now. **No, wait. I think he might have a point. _**So what? He can fix it later!**_ But it might be useful _now_. _**Bah!"**_ Another clink, another silver flash. "There. Thank you, law of averages. _**Fine. You've got half an hour, Ed. **_**Then**_** we leave."**_

"An hour."

"_**Forty minutes. And not a second longer.**_"

"Done!"

Two-Face stomped off, leaving Edward to root through the boxes for a soldering iron and some sort of voltmeter. When he returned some thirty minutes later, feeling rather more comfortable in his customary two-toned outfit, he found Edward had hooked up a rather battered speaker to the radio and was now flicking happily through the frequencies.

"Ta-da!" he grinned. "Told you I could fix it. Ooh, hello there, GCPD!"

"..._-nfirm your location?" _stuttered the radio. "_This is car 43, all clear. Any news on the Arkham truck? Roger that, 43, Arkham security confirms that was _not_ one of their men. Repeat, Arkham truck was likely escaped inmates. Last seen heading north-."_

"We're rumbled," Harvey said quickly. "_**You got two minutes to change. Then we leave.**_"

"Gotcha."

While Edward emptied out the remainder of the bags in search of something wearable that wasn't luminous orange, Harvey gathered up all the equipment that looked useful, threw everything else in a pile in the corner of the warehouse and tucked the radio onto the van's dashboard. Two-Face briefly considered torching the place, but a gentle hint from his other half that it might make it rather obvious where they had been hiding put a stop to that plan.

"_**Time's up!" **_he called when he'd loaded the last box, activating the mechanism to open the main doors.

"Just a second," Edward replied from in front of a very dirty mirror he'd managed to find where, now in his trademark green attire, he was currently adjusting the angle of his hat. "A little to the left..." He nudged the brim almost imperceptibly. "Perfect!" he declared. "Positively rakish, if I say so myself."

"And you do," Harvey muttered as he nudged the van's engines to life. "_**Constantly.**_"

Having finally attained his own impossibly high standard of appearance, Edward joined his co-conspirator in the van.

"Right, let's get this show on the ro-aaargh!" Edward barely managed to close the door behind him as Two-Face floored the accelerator and the van leapt forwards like a startled beast, out into the dark Gotham night. They sped through the industrial estate, taking the next corner on two wheels as the brakes screeched. The engine added its vehement protests as Two-Face ground up through the gears and Edward fumbled for the seat belt.

"Hello, safety belt," he muttered. "I can see we're going to become very good friends during this exciting venture, but I should warn you now; I'm not a one-safety-restraint kind of guy."

"You know, talking to yourself is a sure sign of madness," Harvey commented cheerily and without a hint of irony. "You might want to see someone about that."

"Pots and kettles, Harv."

"Don't know what you mean, Ed. _**Yeah, what're you talking about?**_"

"You're two halves of a whole idiot."

"Ouch. _**Who's a pot now?"**_

Edward sighed, rolled the window down and stuck his head out. Over the roar of the wind, he could just about hear sirens in the distance, but this was Gotham, after all, and that could mean anything from 'They know where you are and are coming for you _right now._' through 'A mad clown's set off laughing-gas bombs in the downtown mall!" to 'Some short guy in a topper just broke into the Gotham Museum's "Famous Hats Through The Ages" exhibit and made off with Charlie Chaplin's bowler.'. Still, it didn't hurt to be cautious.

"So," he said, winding the window back up to stop the invasion of cold air. "Is this the part where you tell me what we're doing?"

"We're going north."

"North?"

"_**North."**_

"Well, it's a start. I've worked on jobs with less direction." Edward paused for a moment to see if Harvey had caught the pun, but was met with silence. Pouting, he continued. "What are we going to do once we've gone north?"

"Dunno. Go west, maybe? _**I've always wanted to go west. **_Yeah, me too."

"Oh, great. I'm so glad to be a part of this thrilling and _specific_ venture."

"_**Shut up. We were joking. **_We're going to pick up something."

"Anything in particular."

"Oh, just a _couple_ of old friends..."


End file.
